More Than a Statute: The Things I Can Do Anywhere

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There are skills you can put on a résumé.

You can list your education. Your job title. Your years of experience. The things you have built, managed, learned, and accomplished. You can point to the degree on the wall, the business card in your purse, the office you worked hard to build, and the work that has shaped so much of your life.

But some of the skills that matter most do not fit neatly into a job description.

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Nobody teaches you how to turn a horrible night into a damn good story, but I sure can.

Nobody gives you a certificate for surviving something embarrassing, exhausting, heartbreaking, or completely ridiculous—and then, days, weeks, months or years later, telling it in a way that makes everyone around you laugh until they cannot breathe, I can do that too.

I can take a night that felt like an absolute disaster while I was living it and eventually find the part of it that became family history.

I can remember the absurd detail everybody else forgot. I can turn the thing that once made us all miserable into the story that gets retold at holidays, in the office, in the car, or on the couch when somebody says, “Do you remember when…?”

That is not always a small thing.

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Sometimes people need to be reminded that a hard moment does not have to become the whole story. Sometimes they need someone to sit beside them in the middle of the mess and say, “This is awful right now, but one day we may laugh about the fact that this happened.”

I can also come up with an idea for just about anything.

Give me a problem, a blank page, a business idea, a hard conversation, a family mess, a client question, a half-finished plan, or a situation that makes everyone else stare at each other and ask, “What are we supposed to do now?”

I may not have the answer immediately. I may complain a little while I am thinking. I may pace, talk too fast, open fifteen tabs in my brain at once, and make a dramatic announcement about how nobody appreciates what I go through around here.

But eventually, I am going to come up with something.

That is one of the things I trust most about myself. I can find a next step. I can find an angle. I can find a way to make something work, even when the original plan has gone completely off the rails.

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I can also make another human feel better about themselves simply by telling them one of my stories.

That may sound strange, but it is true.

There is something comforting about realizing that somebody else has also had a day where nothing went right. Somebody else has forgotten something important, said the wrong thing, been late, been overwhelmed, had a plan fall apart, made a mess, or found themselves standing in the middle of a situation thinking, “Well, this is not how I thought today was going to go.”

I do not believe people always need somebody to tell them how to fix themselves.

Sometimes they need somebody to look them in the eye and let them know they are not the only person who has ever had a terrible day, made a mistake, or felt completely unequipped for what life put in front of them.

Sometimes people need a completely honest person to look them in the eye and bluntly remind them “look, if you think you’ve screwed up, let me tell you about my night on December 5, 2020…I guarantee you’ll feel better about yourself.” That may not be the politically appropriate way to hold a conversation, but it’s real. And to me, real beats politics all damn day.

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And sometimes, in the middle of the most

insane and ridiculous moments imaginable, I can make people laugh.

I can make a room breathe again. Don’t get me wrong, I can most certainly make the room ice cold if that is what the situation calls for, but I prefer the funny rooms.

I can find the tiny, absurd piece of a situation that reminds people we are still human. Not because the hard thing is not hard. Not because laughter makes pain disappear. But because sometimes laughter gives people enough room to keep going.

That is a skill I am proud of.

I am proud that I can be in a room where everybody is tense, worried, tired, frustrated, or hanging on by a thread and somehow say the one thing that makes them laugh. Sometimes that laugh is the first sign that people are going to be okay.

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And I can build a home anywhere.

Not because every place feels the same. Not because history, memories, and roots do not matter. They do.

But a home has never been just a building, a town, a street, or an address.

A home is the way you make people feel when they walk into the room. It is the way you tell the truth. It is the way you create laughter in the middle of chaos. It is the way you make space for people to be themselves without having to pretend they have it all together.

I have learned that I carry that with me.

I am not polished in every moment. I am not quiet. I am not everybody’s cup of tea, and I have never been particularly interested in pretending to be.

But I am real.

What you see is what you get: somebody who will tell you the truth, probably share an opinion, find a way forward, make you laugh if I can, and show up with all of herself.

Those things do not belong to a building.

They do not belong to a title.

They do not belong to a town.

They are mine.

And wherever life takes me, I will take them with me—because the most important things I have built are not places or positions, but the way I show up in the world.

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Judith L. Hampton

Attorney At Law

Hampton Law Firm